Thursday, April 30, 2015

Joanna Biggs is a writer and editor at the London Review of Books. Her new book is All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain At Work.

One of her top ten books about working life, as shared at the Guardian:

A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark

Nancy Hawkins is the editor-in-chief at Ullswater Press in 1954. The office clock is “unreliable”, the authors ring to complain about not being paid, sandwiches are sent out for and eaten with office-made coffee when it rains, Ivy the typist never lets up, a raincoated man from the (unpaid) printer stares up from the street all week, manuscripts pile up on Mrs Hawkins’s desk and sherry is poured out at 5.30pm. I, needless to say, long to walk into the office of Ullswater Press.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

At the Guardian, Sarah Holding, author of the SeaBEAN eco-thriller trilogy, tagged her top ten "cli-fi novels that make you think deeply about the human consequences of climate change," including:

Blood Red Road by Moira Young

Also a debut novel, I loved the bleak, troubled voice of Saba in this story, as she chases across a desolate landscape after the people who took her twin brother Lugh. Buckle up for an epic dystopian road novel with strong characters, spiced with romance and a convincing sense of danger throughout.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

At the Guardian, John Dugdale tagged ten of the best fictional elections (UK edition), including:

To Play the King by Michael Dobbs (1992)

Dobbs’s better-known House of Cards is about what happens after an election, as is Chris Mullins’s A Very British Coup; whereas here Francis Urquhart, as Tory PM, campaigns in an election where his real opponent is King Charles III, who sees Urquhart’s policies as divisive and lacking in compassion and aligns himself with the opposition.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Ellen McCarthy is an award-winning feature writer for the Style section of The Washington Post. She joined the Post in 2000 and wrote about business, technology, arts, and entertainment before launching the paper’s On Love section in 2009. She has interviewed hundreds of couples and written extensively about weddings and relationships. Her first book, The Real Thing: Lessons on Love and Life from a Wedding Reporter’s Notebook, is the culmination of that work.

One of McCarthy's six favorite books about weddings and marriage, as shared at The Week magazine:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The book that taught me that wit and intellect are every bit as attractive as physical beauty. We spend most of Jane Austen's classic watching Elizabeth Bennet spar with Mr. Darcy, even as she unwillingly falls in love with him.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Kelly Link is the author of the story collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, The Wrong Grave, Pretty Monsters and most recently Get In Trouble.

One of four books that changed her, as shared at the Sydney Morning Herald:

Carmen Dog
Carol Emshwiller

A battle of the sexes novel in which animals begin to turn into women, and women turn into animals. A wife becomes a wolverine. A dog yearns to sing opera at the Metropolitan. Mad scientists! A book I was so crazy about that I eventually republished it through the small press that I run with my husband.

Friday, April 24, 2015

For Tor.com she tagged five top books about false identities, including:

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

It might be a stretch to include this book on this particular list, but I was especially affected by the time the hero, Kvothe, spent alone in the woods and then his years as a street urchin. With the traumatic death of his parents, Kvothe loses his place in the world, and with it his identity. He essentially becomes someone else for a very long time, until he recovers enough of who he is to move forward with his life.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Karin Altenberg was born in Sweden and moved to Britain to study in 1996. Her first novel, Island of Wings, was shortlisted for the Scottish book of the year award and longlisted for the Orange prize for fiction. Her latest novel is Breaking Light.

One of Altenberg's top ten books about betrayal, as shared at the Guardian:

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark’s Calvinist influence is evident in the story of Miss Jean Brodie, a captivating Edinburgh schoolteacher with an almost godlike authority and fascist leanings. Spark’s superb wry humour and elegant phrasing carry this otherwise rather sinister tale of Brodie’s manipulation of her special girls - her créme de la crème – and her pupil Sandy’s betrayal.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

One title on Dahlia Adler's list of seven great YA novels about best friendship, as shared on the B & N Teen Blog:

Under a Painted Sky, by Stacey Lee

Lee’s racially diverse YA western is about many things, but at the heart of it is the relationship between newfound best friends Sammy and Annamae. Sammy is a newly orphaned Chinese American girl on the run from the law; Annamae is the slave who joins her in the hopes of a better life. The year is 1849 and together the girls head west, disguising themselves as cowboys for the journey. What could be a terrifying and isolating trip turns into an excitement-laden adventure as the two work together, protect each other, make new friends, and become each other’s family in this unique and lovely historical.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

At B & N Reads, Kelly Anderson tagged five books to help you celebrate the power of love, including:

The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss

I read this book once, just before I started dating the man who is now my husband, but the delicate, surreal feel of it has stayed with me ever since. Krauss’s tale of love focuses on an old man and a book he wrote a lifetime ago. It showcases a love that lasts decades and spans countries and multiple versions of the past, with gorgeously realized prose in perfect accordance with that feeling of all-encompassing, overwhelming love we envy in newlyweds.

Monday, April 20, 2015

At The Week magazine he tagged his six favorite books with sympathetic characters in dangerous settings, including:

Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn by Evan S. Connell

This chronicle proves how a superb American novelist — in this case the author of Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge — can write a great work of American history. Connell made sense of the insanity of the Battle of Little Big Horn and anatomized the psychopathology of Gen. George Armstrong Custer. Son of the Morning Star shows how the military mind and the criminal mind too often too perfectly intersect.

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Ferdinand Mount is the author of The Tears of the Rajas: Mutiny, Money and Marriage in India 1805-1905.

One of his top ten books about the British in India, as shared at the Guardian:

The Great Mutiny by Christopher Hibbert (1978)

For the British, there was no more traumatic event in the entire 19th century than the Great Mutiny. The European officers were cut down by their own men whose loyalty they had trusted, and their women and children were butchered in what looks like a variety of ethnic cleansing. This savage ingratitude for the supposed blessings of British rule provoked a retaliation on a far greater scale, which shocked public opinion “at home” as much as the mutiny itself. Hibbert’s book is the best short account of those terrible months.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

At B & N Reads, Jenny Kawecki tagged six of the best fictionalized biographies, including:

The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain

Speaking of power couples, this book is not about one. McClain’s novel fictionalizes the life of Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway’s first wife. During the years the couple lived in Paris, Hadley struggles to support Hemingway emotionally and artistically as he writes The Sun Also Rises. Everyone’s got an opinion on Hemingway, and good or bad, you’ll find something to agree with in this bio/novel.

Friday, April 17, 2015

Brian Conaghan is the author of When Mr Dog Bites, first published in the UK in January 2014 to great critical acclaim and which has been shortlisted for the 2015 CILIP Carnegie Medal.

At the Guardian he tagged his top ten controversial teen books, including:

Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

This memoir relates to Kaysen’s experience as a teenager’s reluctant route into womanhood. The book is set in a psychiatric hospital after she was diagnosed with a personality disorder. Kaysen provides personal stories, a series of reflections and anecdotal descriptions of events whilst as a patient. Obviously Girl, Interrupted’s leans towards suicide, mental illness, incarceration and drug use, however it is an honest, poignant and at times fiercely funny book.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Sarah Alderson is the author of Hunting Lila (winner of the Kingston Book Award), Losing Lila, Fated, The Sound, Out of Control, and Conspiracy Girl. At the Guardian, she tagged her top ten feminist icons in children's and teen books. One title on the list:

Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins)

Yes, Katniss is strong, brave and can wield a bow and arrow like nobody else. She also becomes the poster child for equality for all, but it isn’t this alone that makes her a feminist, I would argue that the way she forges relationships with others, particularly women and girls, in defiance of a patriarchal society, is why she ultimately triumphs in the arena and what makes her such a special character in the YA world.

On June 16, 2004, brothers Stephen and Leo, polar opposites in every way, prepare for a their grandmother’s funeral and their striver parents’ Bloomsday party later that night. Caught between them is Nora, best friend of the former and fiancée of the latter. Oldest Stephen, a graduate student, fulfills his parents’ intellectual pretensions but questions his purpose as an academic. Leopold, an IT consultant who enjoys beer and sports, longs for acceptance from his parents but rejects their pretentions. Nora, a talented opera singer, had a promising career on the horizon but abandoned it in the wake of her mother’s death and is beset by crippling anxiety.

Each character harbors secrets that bubble contentiously to the surface over the course of the day in this novel about intersecting stories, the search for personal meaning, and the difficulty of coming to terms with who you are in relation to those around you, especially your siblings.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Rachel Hamilton studied at Oxford and Cambridge and has put her education to good use by working in an ad agency, a comprehensive school, a building site and a men’s prison. Her interests are books, films, stand-up comedy and cake, and she loves to make people laugh, especially when it’s intentional rather than accidental.

She is the author of The Case of the Exploding Loo and The Case of the Exploding Brains.

One of her top ten explosions in children's books, as shared at the Guardian:

Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett has created some of the wisest and funniest lines ever written. But my favourite of them all is his brilliant reference to the most important explosion of all. It is both the opening line of Lords and Ladies and the closing line of my top 10 list:

Monday, April 13, 2015

Amber Tamblyn is a contributing writer for the Poetry Foundation and the author of three works of poetry, Free Stallion, Bang Ditto, and Dark Sparkler. As an actress, she has been nominated for an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and an Independent Spirit award.

One of her six favorite books, as shared with The Week magazine:

Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg

I love books with unintended heroines. Smilla Jaspersen, a Greenland-born resident of Copenhagen, turns into the most badass homicide detective the world has ever seen after the suspicious death of her 6-year-old neighbor. Her story makes for an incredible ride. I read it once a year, usually during the height of summer.

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket/Gallery. He has published over thirty short stories as well.

At the B & N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog Somers tagged five books that resist the handwave with believable futuristic technology ("The Handwave is a powerful thing is sci-fi: the ability to fix a problem with a science-y sounding solution that isn’t even remotely plausible"), including:

The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson

The result of both meticulous research and good old-fashioned thoughtfulness, Robinson’s Mars Trilogy manages to take something that potentially bone-chillingly boring (the centuries-long effort to terraform and settle Mars) and make it into a fascinating, exciting, often shocking story of politics, economics, genetics, and very believable science. Robinson’s secret isn’t so much the plausibility of his science as it is the thoughtful way he explores its consequences, deftly avoiding the common problem of technology that exists in a vacuum, fulfilling only a specific need, with no unforeseen ripple effects. To say that’s not the case in this incredible series is a vast understatement.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Sona Charaipotra is a New York City-based writer and editor with more than a decade’s worth of experience in print and online media. For the B & N Teen Blog she tagged seven top YA books for fans of Game of Thrones, including:

The Wrath And The Dawn, by Renee Ahdieh

Drawing from the grandeur of a magical, Middle Eastern–flavored setting, this A Thousand And One Nights unspinning has it all—revolution and politics, a slow-simmering, impossible romance, and vengeance, of course, all unfolding in lush, lyrical language. Smart and resourceful Shazi, on a suicide mission to kill the Caliph of Khorasan—who’s married then murdered countless girls, including her best friend—discovers herself fighting to survive instead. And finding love with the enemy in the process? Confounding, yes. But delicious indeed.

Friday, April 10, 2015

Joseph Connolly's latest novel is Style. For the Guardian he tagged his top ten novels about style, including:

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

The “Great American Novel” about class, money, decadence, money, obsession, selfishness, passion, money, clothes and money. A highly amusing though grossly overrated book – it is no wonder that it was voted the 20th century’s best American novel, because Americans sincerely believe that they actually invented style: the best that money can buy.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Meredith Moore is the author of the new Young Adult thriller I Am Her Revenge. At the B & N Teen Blog she tagged her five favorite YA thrillers, including:

We Were Liars, by E. Lockhart

Lockhart creates a tightly woven narrative about a girl, her family’s island, and a troupe of lying cousins. This is one of those books you shouldn’t know anything about before you start reading, so I won’t summarize it here, except to say the threat is mainly psychological, and Lockhart does a fabulous job of building tension in each scene. That tension leads to a twist ending that will blow you away.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

John Hooper is the author of The Italians and the Southern Europe editor of the Guardian and Observer.

He tagged his top ten books about Italy, including:

The Sack of Rome by Alexander Stille

It is striking how many books about Italy have deceptive titles. This one is really a biography of Silvio Berlusconi. It suffered from being published in 2006 when the media tycoon had just lost an election and his political career seemed over. The Sack of Rome pre-dates Bunga Bunga, but foreshadows it, and remains the most penetrating exploration of the doings of the man who, more than any, has shaped the outlook of today’s Italians: “Berlusconi believes that the world revolves him – the ultimate narcissistic fantasy – but he has bent reality to fit his fantasy, so that much of life in Italy does indeed revolve around him.”

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

T.C. Boyle's latest novel The Harder They Come explores the roots of violence and anti-authoritarianism inherent in the American character. For The Week magazine he tagged his six favorite books that explore man's inherent violence, including:

Deliverance by James Dickey

I recently revisited this 1970 novel and found it even better than I'd remembered. Dickey's line-to-line writing is sublime without ever getting in the way, and his depiction of four men reverting to the primitive while on a Georgia canoe trip is telling and well measured — Lord of the Flies peopled with adults.

Monday, April 6, 2015

At io9 Diana Biller tagged 22 great science fiction and fantasy stories that can help you make sense of economics, including:

The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi

A super-upsetting novel about extreme resource scarcity, environmental disaster, and agribusiness, The Windup Girl is one of those books that strikes a little too close to home. Oil is gone, the sea levels are rising, and food is sold by exploitative calorie companies driven entirely by their bottom line. This is a great look at what happens when basic necessities become so scarce that people go to extreme lengths to control them.

Sunday, April 5, 2015

BBC.com Culture’s Jane Ciabattari polled dozens of critics around the world about the best children’s books (for ages 10 and under) ever published in English. One of the top 11 on the list:

Ursula K Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)

A young boy known as Sparrowhawk saves his village with a smattering of magic he learned from his aunt, a local witch. Apprenticed to the mage Ogion the Silent, and renamed Ged, he begins his training as a sorcerer. Le Guin’s exploration of the consequences of Ged’s misfires and temptations while at a school for wizards, his struggles with dragons and his inner demons, reshaped fantasy storytelling’s concepts of good and evil. Gradually, Ged gains wisdom as he faces his challenges. "He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun." "To me Le Guin’s story is about learning your craft as a writer, the long and painful struggle for mastery of both your art and yourself, written in astounding prose," says Amanda Craig, author and reviewer for the New Statesman and the Daily Telegraph.

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Jim Bouton was a pitcher for the Seattle Pilots in 1969, the only year this MLB team existed. In this zany 1970 book, Bouton gives a behind-the-scenes look at baseball, including the players’ rampant use of methamphetamines, interpersonal squabbles, ogling of women, and Mickey Mantle’s drinking problem. Bouton got into a lot of trouble for writing it—he was ostracized by fellow players—but his witty voice and honesty about his decline as an athlete are what make it still entertaining and insightful today. “Baseball players are smarter than football players,” he writes. “How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many men on the field?”

Friday, April 3, 2015

Rob Dunn, associate professor of Ecology and Evolution in the Department of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University, is the author of The Wild Life of Our Bodies,Every Living Thing and, most recently, The Man Who Touched His Own Heart: True Tales of Science, Surgery, and Mystery.

At The Daily Beast he tagged seven top books with literal or figurative hearts, including:

In William Harvey, A Life in Circulation (Oxford University Press, 2013), Thomas Wright tells the untold story of the man who figured out circulation. Until Harvey, no one could quite make sense of the heart and cardiovascular system, which way blood moved, what moved it and to what end it served. Harvey more than anyone made sense of how and why our heart and, with it, our bodies more generally, works.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Nobody does sexual obsession like Patricia Highsmith. In the forthcoming adaptation of her cult classic novel The Price of Salt (to be released with its alternate title, Carol), Rooney Mara’s dissatisfied shopgirl has a chance meeting with Cate Blanchett’s elegant housewife, and love, dreams of escape, and blackmail follow. We can’t wait to see what Todd Haynes, known for his incredible direction of women, does with this one.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Sona Charaipotra is a New York City-based writer and editor with more than a decade’s worth of experience in print and online media. For the B & N Teen Blog she tagged ten top books for fans of The X-Files, including:

Adaptation, by Malinda Lo

There’s always been something creepy about birds–and in Malinda Lo’s dark Adaptation, there’s good reason to be freaked. Flocks of them are crashing into planes, causing thousands of people to lose their lives. The country’s on a terror alert, and Reese, after recovering from an accident near the infamous Area 51, returns to a San Francisco on military lockdown to discover she and pal David have changed in inexplicable ways. She’s focused on a blooming relationship with pink-haired Amber, but the men in suits that are stalking her and David put a bit of a damper on things.

Jamie Kornegay lives in the Mississippi Delta, where he moved in 2006 to establish an independent bookstore, TurnRow Book Co. Before that he was a bookseller, events coordinator, and radio show producer at the famous Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi. He studied creative fiction under Barry Hannah at the University of Mississippi.

At Publishers Weekly the author tagged his ten best Southern Gothic books, including:

Citrus County by John Brandon

Southern Gothic still seems like an Old South institution, and I wasn’t sure it could be properly represented in a modern setting. But John Brandon’s quietly brilliant and unsung novel depicts the cruelty of youth in a New South Gothic. A frustrated eighth-grade boy commits a terrible act, which Brandon wisely lets simmer in the background as his characters move about rural Florida, bemused and nonchalant. The humor here has an off-handed, almost unintended quality that adds to the creepiness. The real world becomes Gothic in the long shadow of this book, and I admired the lingering, low-grade anxiety that book left in me.